Carrington College: Ensemble Coding as Medical Coding Advancement

This report explores ensemble coding as a significant advancement in medical coding, drawing from an empirical study on face recognition in children. The study investigates how ensemble coding enables individuals to access average properties of groups, even in the absence of detailed representations, particularly in the context of facial features. The research demonstrates that children as young as six years old utilize ensemble coding, which develops dissociably from individual face coding. The report discusses the implications of this neuro-developmental process, including its potential applications in understanding expressions and social cues, and its relevance to fields like psychology and healthcare. The report also highlights the differences between ensemble and individual coding and suggests the importance of future research to determine if ensemble coding can be extended to capture more complex features like expressions. The study provides valuable information and concludes that ensemble coding is a developmental procedure and exists in the human mind in the form of a stop motion image capture device that clicks mental pictures of relevant features and assembles them whenever necessary to determine whether the object in sight is old or new to perception.

ENSEBLE CODING AS A MAJOR ADVANCEMENT IN MEDICAL CODING SYSTEM
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Ensemble coding as a major Advancement in Medical Coding system
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Introduction
Ensemble coding is a process that builds upon the concept of neural ensemble – a
population of neurons involved in a neural calculation. That calculation allows for the
perception system to identify and analyse various objects in detail. The paper concerned deals
with ensemble coding by taking into account how humans, in absence of a detailed
representation, still can experience a visually rich world (Whitney et al., 2014).
The article takes into account the human faces as the identifying parameter and focusing on
the various details entailed with a face, like size, colour, shape and even direction of motion,
the paper attempts to correlate the function of ensemble coding as the reporter of identity,
expression, gender, attractiveness and direction of gaze (Sweeny et al., 2015). The paper
under study aims to better understand the visual coding skills of children by asking whether
children possess the same skills as adults in identifying faces by extracting abstract ensemble
information (Simmering, 2012). Overall the paper targets understanding child visual
perception in a better way.
My profession is medical billing and coding which requires knowledge on medical
coding system in any field of medical study which also involves psychology as well.
Therefore concerning this fact it can be said the field of clinical psychology needs the
medical coding as well as billing system as well. Therefore, these vice versa dependency
develops the strong connection between my profession medical billing and coding and
psychology.
With the advancement in medical coding system, psychological coding system is also
evolving. This topic can shed light on how the new coding techniques are advancing the
conventional medical coding in the field of psychology.

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Thesis Statement
Ensemble coding has evolved to be a huge part in the study of understanding human
perception of features in restricted time and can provide further details into the functioning of
the visual perception system of humans.
Discussion
The chosen article is an empirical study based on experimental method regarding the
factor that Ensemble coding is currently allowing the adults to access useful information
about average properties of groups. The study also proved that it could be even equally
effective in the absence of detailed representations of individual group members. This
facility increases the access on average age based information from ‘6 - 8 years’ to ‘6 – 18
years’ range. To conduct this experimental research, 2 sets of photographic images were
taken and the results were presented in scattered plot. This research provides the first direct
proof that distinct processes underlie ensemble and individual coding of face identity.
The article conducts an experiments with children in the age group of 6 to 18 years
old in order to determine the presence of ensemble coding in them. They use an identity
matching task where the children are shown faces in different test conditions and are asked to
determine whether the particular face is present in the testing set or not. Two types of
reference images were provided- an individual face and a set average face (digital merger of
different faces). The target was to statistically determine the possibility of presence of
ensemble coding in children as young as 6 years old. Since ensemble coding assumes that

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abstract information regarding facial features would be gathered by one glance, a set average
face would be beneficial in proving the hypothesis correct.
The results of the study show that there is high correlation between the set average
images and perception of abstract properties (Rhodes et al, 2018). Early development theories
state that children possess the property of identifying abstract information at a glance given
that their brain is less accustomed to controlled focus and attention. It is a coping mechanism
for children that they can identify the richness and variety of the visual stimuli in the
environment and account for them in their perception (Sutherland et al., 2013). The article
states that this kind of perceptive mechanism acts as an evolutionary and adaptive aid for the
children. They are able to identify expressions pertaining to characteristics like
trustworthiness or attractiveness through one glance at the face (Walker & Vul, 2014).
Ensemble coding in this way helps in the development of a subjective social mindset that
determines the particular way in which a child would grow up perceiving the world. The
article has successfully determined through the data it has collected that ensemble coding is
not only present in children, it is also present in children as young as six years old (Rhodes et
al, 2018). A deeper critical analysis into the findings reports that ensemble coding is a
developmental procedure and exists in the human mind in the form of a stop motion image
capture device that clicks mental pictures of relevant features and assembles them whenever
necessary to determine whether the object in sight is old or new to perception. Ensemble
coding also develops with age and in cases, the individual can even harness the power of
ensemble coding and adapt it to suit specific needs (Jeffery, Read, & Rhodes, 2013). Police
and detectives who need to gather a lot of information in a short span of time, use the process
of ensemble coding to develop their observation skills and utilise them in solving cases.
A key difference that the article addresses is the difference between ensemble coding
and individual coding (Weigelt et al., 2014). While individual coding definitely enables

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humans to identify and store in memory individual human faces, like that of a family member
or a friend or even a movie star, ensemble coding is focused on identifying faces in general so
that a few particular features, like the sharpness of the jaw, or the type of smile, the way the
head is tilted etc. can provide an observer with the answer that the individual has been seen
somewhere before. The study described in the article found that both ensemble coding and
individual coding is present in the youngest children and they can develop with age (Rhodes
et al, 2018). The study also provides evidence, in absence of other research that both the
types of coding are distinctly different and that identifying the underlying abstract features of
a face is a process that is distinguishable from that which includes identifying detailed
features of one particular face (Rhodes et al, 2018).
There are certain drop points in the data they provided as well. They observed that
due to certain social and pubertal changes, the age group of 12-16 years shows a slight drop
in the individual representation of adult faces (Picci & Scherf, 2016). However when
compared with the steady development of the ability, the drop is identified to be insignificant.
The current study, although provides a lot of valuable information, does not tell us whether
the perception is limited to only facial features or can extend into more detailed aspects as
well (Rhodes et al, 2018). The article states the importance of future research in order to
determine the possibility that ensemble coding is also capable of capturing more complex
features like expressions (Haberman, Brady & Alvarez, 2015). If a study like that can
determine the possibility of an existing relation between ensemble coding and the
aforementioned parameter(s), it can lead to a highly significant development where a lot of
use can be developed for ensemble coding (Rhodes et al, 2018). The first and foremost would
be for people to be able to read expressions and capture whether the expression is deceitful,
threatening or trustworthy. These are also the parameters that children are affected by when
they are considering communication with a person.

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Conclusion
Ensemble coding as a neuro-developmental process is highly advanced and can account for a
lot of developmental strategies and how they vary across people. Studying children is the
more reasonable approach as they are difficult to be primed. Thus, future research in this field
does look promising and has a lot of potential in various fields, including medical.

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References
Haberman, J., Brady, T.F., & Alvarez, G.A. (2015). Individual differences in ensemble
perception reveal multiple, independent levels of ensemble representation. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: General, 144, 432–446.
Jeffery, L., Read, A., & Rhodes, G. (2013). Four year-olds use norm-based coding for face
identity. Cognition, 127, 258–263.
Picci, G., & Scherf, K. (2016). From caregivers to peers: Puberty shapes human face
perception. Psychological Science, 27, 1461–1473.
Rhodes, G., Neumann, M., Ewing, L., Bank, S., Read, A., Engfors, L. M., & Palermo, R.
(2018). Ensemble coding of faces occurs in children and develops dissociably from
coding of individual faces. Developmental science, 21(2), e12540.
Simmering, V.R. (2012). The development of visual working memory capacity during early
childhood. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 111, 695–707.
Sutherland, C.M., Oldmeadow, J.A., Santos, I.M., Towler, J., Burt, D.M., & Young, A.W.
(2013). Social inferences from faces: Ambient images generate a three-dimensional
model. Cognition, 127, 105–118.
Sweeny, T.D., Wurnitsch, N., Gopnik, A., & Whitney, D. (2015). Ensemble perception of
size in 4–5-year- old children. Developmental Science, 18, 556–568.
Walker, D., & Vul, E. (2014). Hierarchical encoding makes individuals in a group seem more
attractive. Psychological Science, 25, 230–235.

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Weigelt, S., Koldewyn, K., Dilks, D.D., Balas, B., McKone, E., & Kanwisher, N. (2014).
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